Blizzard clarify their position on multi-boxing in World of Warcraft

Multi-boxing is the name of the MMO exploit/bit-of-fun that sees players controlling several characters across several different game clients - often running on separate machines - using one keyboard.

The result is simultaneous control over a group of characters, which can frustrate other players in games like World of Warcraft - not least in PvP - but crucially doesn’t violate the game’s Terms of Service. Now, Blizzard have reiterated their stance on the practice. Multi-boxing is not hacking, says the development giant, but it’s not something they’re about to attach their name to either.

“‘Hackers’ is a term often used to cover people partaking in a very broad range of activities, like exploiting game bugs/mechanics, stealing another person's private account information via keyloggers or phishing, and infiltrating a system's security to gain some level of control over the system or sensitive information held therein,” said the developers in a post picked up by MMO Champion. “The latter of the three is most accurately described as hacking.”

“Nevertheless, all three "hacking" scenarios listed above, as well as the act of running private servers, are violations of the Terms of Use. We take any such violation seriously,” they added.

Multi-boxing doesn’t fit into any of these categories, Blizzard suggest, and so doesn’t necessitate any preventative action - provided the player isn't using any macro scripts that automate gameplay “beyond what is allowed through default macro and API specifications”.

But the developers have no plans to make the practice any easier, or any less expensive.

“We don't support multi-boxing, we never have, and we have no current plans to do so. There's a major difference between verifying a person is not violating the Terms of Use purely by playing multiple characters at once, and adding functionality into the game to officially offer support to anyone who wants to.”

In short: nothing’s set to change here. Let us know your opinion in the comments.